2017-05-10T20:54:33-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/Octopress2017-05-03T00:00:00-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/load-balancing-with-aws-and-ansibleIn this post I’d like to run through how to get going with an Elastic Load Balancer(ELB) within AWS via Ansible. Load balancing your web application is a simple step forward in scaling your request capacity as well as helping out with rolling deploys and promoting/retiring servers in the future. It’s incredibly simple and straightforward to get something setup with Ansible which leaves you with an easy to understand orchestration playbook.
]]>2016-09-27T00:00:00-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/simplifying-local-ansible-and-vagrant-setupTo make context switching easier it’s always a good idea to simplify project specifics with simple bin scripts. They don’t need to do everything but they should at least be a good jump start to get the project going. Here’s a few simples ones that I’ve been using to get my local Ansible and Vagrant setup configured. I utilize Vagrant and Ansible for most of my local development environments.
]]>2016-07-29T21:17:08-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/configuring-vagrant-virtual-machines-with-envIf you share your Vagrantfile and Vagrant provisioning files amongst team members for your local development environment it’s nice to be able to keep some of the options in your Vagrantfile flexible. Settings like memory usage, shared folder locations, and IP addresses. There’s a Vagrant plugin that allows you to do this and it’s really simple to setup.
]]>2016-06-25T21:40:06-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/droneSo I got this drone and it’s amazing.
]]>2016-05-03T16:00:19-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/fixing-imagemagick-cve-20163714-with-ansibleThere’s a recently discovered vulnerability in ImageMagick(CVE-2016-3714) that’s incredibly easy to patch via Ansible. To
address the patch we’ll utilize ImageMagick’s policy.xml file which is a recommended fix.
]]>2016-04-07T08:16:22-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/automating-application-installs-with-ansible-on-osxOn OSX to install most applications you download a .pkg or .dmg file, open it
and then you need to drag it to your Applications folder.
]]>2016-04-04T09:14:21-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/simpler-outbound-event-tracking-with-google-analyticsI started moving around my navigation and omni-present social icons when I realized I didn’t really have any concrete data on what people were actually using. It’s pretty simple to track clicks to external links as events in Google Analytics but even easier via beacon transport.
]]>2016-02-18T07:55:29-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/watches2016-02-16T09:19:46-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/botkitI’ve always been fascinated with simple messaging systems. Back when SMS was the primary text message platform I worked with an agency to build various text based projects.
]]>2016-02-07T10:14:39-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/resolving-dev-to-localhost-with-ansible-and-nginx-on-os-xWhen developing locally it’s nice to be able to have multiple applications running at once and at
pre-determined local domains. The /etc/hosts is one of the simplest ways to configure this but you have to modify it each time you’d like to add a new domain for local development. Pow.cx made this incredibly easy for a while but the better
approach is to be able to have a similar environment to what you’re running in production. Nginx
is really easy to get up and running with and nice to work with so I’ll be using that.
]]>2016-02-04T20:15:29-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/the-super-simple-way-to-add-a-jekyll-based-blog-in-your-rails-applicationIn my original post I talked about setting up Jekyll inside your existing Rails application via gems and modifying your config.ru file. We can simplify the process even more than that though.
]]>2016-02-01T21:55:25-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/simplify-project-specificsAs I’ve been working on this Jekyll blog a bit more recently I’ve found myself wrapping up the most commonly used commands into scripts.
]]>2016-01-26T08:45:43-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/week-22016-01-18T08:41:25-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/week-one2015-12-18T10:00:36-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/mornings2015-05-14T09:02:21-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/vagrant-and-ansible-for-local-developmentIf you’re using Ansible to provision/manage your infrastructure it only makes sense
to utilize the same setup locally instead of having to go through all of the same configuration again. It eliminates a bunch of the “works on my machine” issues, it documents the entire process, makes it easier for new developers to get up to speed, etc.
]]>2015-01-12T14:02:21-06:00http://www.nickhammond.com/useful-gems-to-keep-your-rails-app-freshWhen jumping back and forth between various Rails applications and projects it’s
nice to have some tools to check on the state of the application.
]]>2014-09-04T16:30:16-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/you-should-use-sunrise-to-manage-your-calendarI’ve been using Sunrise as my default calendar for a few months and I can’t imagine it any other way.
]]>2014-08-29T10:15:38-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/easier-screenshot-sharing-osxI share screenshots fairly often throughout the day when I'm working on projects. Most of my communication is via email and chat so sometimes it's easier to just share a screenshot instead of trying to explain what I'm seeing. OS X already makes it incredibly easy to take screenshots but navigating through finder when you want to upload the screenshot isn't as smooth but easily fixed with Stacks, a built in Dock feature.
]]>2014-08-06T09:44:25-05:00http://www.nickhammond.com/setting-octopress-jekyll-blog-rails-applicationUpdate: A much simpler way

For Little Feedback I wanted to have a blog to release new features on and post other updates to. It's a Rails application and I also wanted it to reside on the same top-level domain(www.littlefeedback.com/blog vs. blog.littlefeedback.com). There's a couple routes that come to mind for doing this.